Masterpiece of SF: "Brain Child" by George Turner (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

George Turner at Wikipedia

Order Brain Child Here

"David Chance, the unknowing offspring of a long-forgotten experiment that produced genetically engineered child geniuses, learns terrible secrets about his own conception and discovers the horrifying course that human history is taking."

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: I find it hard to say how many times I have read Brain Child - I would guess that the recent April 2012 reread was my 7th or 8th, but possibly more, though it was the first after the 4 year intensive sff reading/reviewing here at FBC, so I was curious how the novel will stand versus more modern sff - and the book still stands tall so to speak deserving its place on my all time favorite list - place that also covers the rest of the retro-near-future Australia sequence of George Turner comprising The Destiny Makers, Drowning Towers, Genetic Soldier and the posthumous Down There in Darkness.

   

Brain Child takes place in a sort of retro-future Australia of the 2040's with climate change, overpopulation and no Internet, but the power of the narrative, the extraordinarily compelling style of the author, the superbly drawn characters and the twists and turns of the story spiced with a few nuggets of eternal wisdom (power corrupts, who do you trust to watch the watchers etc) make this a top-top sfnal novel.

The story seems straightforward - in 2002 the government created super-babies of which 3 (quadruplet and related in-between like sort of cousins) groups of two girls, two boys A, B, C survived; group A turned to be good at science and group B at art but outside a few social dysfunctions they were within normal human parameters and were released at 18, while now in the 2040's they are reclusive and working for the government in group A case and just reclusive in group B case.

David Chance, young upcoming journalist raised into an upscale orphanage - under the population laws extra children born without permits become charge of the state and are raised in orphanages and of course the rich people's "indiscretions" get better orphanages - gets summoned by Arthur Hazard (of group A, not to speak of the pun of the surnames plus the letter D in David) who declares that he is his father though not by intention as he was experimenting with sex when 18, a girl wanted to keep hold of him etc... 

So David did not get aborted as the girl concealed her pregnancy and he is the only known child of the groups, while now he has to undertake the mission he was raised for and subtly influenced from young age when his existence became known to Arthur and the government (so his education was subtly directed to turn him towards journalism etc). After a bit of recriminations and feeling upset, David is hooked on the mission and the adventure starts.

The mission? Well, remember group C; they were true posthumans, super-powerful, unknowable and the humans in charge got scared and kept them isolated, but at age 18 one of them, Conrad escaped to unknown hereabouts; returning a few months later he conferred with his group - nobody knows what about since once Conrad returned his group, which until them accepted the humans surveillance and later harsh interrogation up to torture, now isolated itself and accepted only one nurse as point of contact - and then they committed suicide - they just stopped living. However, Conrad tantalizingly mentioned a "legacy" to the nurse and only a few like Armstrong, the scummy politician that originated the project and who kept that nurse on his private payroll and the Hazards knew about that...

Said legacy may have to do with human immortality or at least control of DNA and genetics, while David is also nudged to find out what happened to Conrad in his months away and why group C committed suicide on return. Just awesome and with so many twists and turns and a "jaw breaking" denouement that is still powerful on the 8th reading or so.

All George Turner's books mentioned above in this sequence are superb, still relevant and highly readable though Brain Child is still the one that stayed with me the most.

 

"Lehrter Station (John Russell #5)" by David Downing (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

David Downing at Wikipedia

Order Lehrter Station HERE

INTRODUCTION: Together with Alan Furst's historical novels about the immediate pre-WW 2 period, David Downing's John Russell novels which start on New Year's day 1939 in Zoo Station and so far cover the period up to New Year's Day 1946 at the end of Lehrter Station are big favorites that combine superb historical fiction - atmosphere, characters - with a dash of intrigue and action. Here is the blurb and more about it below.

"Paris, November 1945. John Russell is walking home along the banks of the Seine on a cold and misty evening when Soviet agent Yevgeny Shchepkin falls into step alongside him. Shchepkin tells Russell that the American intelligence will soon be asking him to undertake some low grade espionage on their behalf—assessing the strains between different sections of the German Communist Party—and that Shchepkin’s own bosses in Moscow want him to accept the task and pass his findings on to them. He adds that refusal will put Russell’s livelihood and life at risk, but that once he has accepted it, he’ll find himself even further entangled in the Soviet net. It’s a lose-lose situation.

Shchepkin admits that his own survival now depends on his ability to utilize Russell. The only way out for the two of them is to make a deal with the Americans. If they can come up with something the Americans want or need badly enough, then perhaps Russell will be forgiven for handing German atomic secrets over to Moscow and Shchepkin might be offered the sort of sanctuary that also safeguards the lives of his wife and daughter in Moscow. Every decision Russell makes now is a dangerous one."

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Lehrter Station is the fifth John Russell novel and it was still captivating and making me want the next installment asap - and there will be a next and probably as many as the market will bear since there is so much stuff that's going on and as the hero puts it:

"Rather to his surprise, he felt more sanguine about his new espionage career than he had when the Soviets first came to call. Wondering why, he realized what had changed. While the Nazis had flourished, he’d had no ethical room for manoeuvre. Helping them, or hindering their enemies, were not things he could live with. Or not with any sense of self-worth. But that black-and-white world had vanished with Hitler, and the new one really was in shifting shades of grey. He could make arguments for and against any of the major players; in helping one or the other he had no sense of supporting good against evil, or evil against good. If, in personal terms, Yevgeny Shchepkin was almost a kindred spirit, and Scott Dallin someone from a distant unfriendly planet, he had no illusions about Stalin’s Russia. And though American help was his only way out of the Soviet embrace, that didn’t mean he wanted a world run by money and big business"

Coming back to the book, first let's note that the blurb is wrong since it's London November 1945, John and his extended family (Effi - his longtime German actress girlfriend who missed escaping with him from Nazi Germany in late 1941 and spent the rest of the war in Berlin acting the part of an old woman and working for the underground that tried saving Jews and regime opponents, Rosa - their 7 year old Jewish "adopted" daughter assuming of course that her father is not to be found in the ruins of Germany, Paul - his 19 year old son and scarred veteran of the Reich's army, Zarah - Effi's sister married with a former mid/high ranking Nazi bureaucrat presumed dead or arrested, Lothar - her 11 year old son) are living in modest circumstances there, though Zarah and Paul are adapting better, while John is sort of blacklisted by the British press and Effi wants to act again (noting that while she did not act in a movie since 1941, she acted for her life in Berlin 1941-1945).

The first Soviet team (ironically the NKVD team, Dynamo) to visit the UK (and mostly trashing the British footballers on home ground) brings Yevgeny Shchepkin and his sinister boss Nemedin to London with an offer John Russell cannot refuse as trading atomic secrets to the Russians for his family above while understandable at a personal level can still lead to the gallows or the electric chair depending which of the two countries he is citizen of gets to try him; though of course Yevgeny wants out too so they form an alliance and John starts playing the double agent role though it is not yet clear for whom yet as the quote above notes...

The offer included John getting back into journalism and Effi back in movies, both of course back in occupied Berlin and the story moves there and continues to a very good ending point a few months later for what is the first of hopefully many postwar novels.

Here is another memorable quote:

"The war had only been over six months, but the British and the French were already irrelevant – there were only two real powers in the city, or in the wider continent. And as luck would have it, he was working for both."

The journalism part starts involving the Jewish underground routes to Palestine and trips to Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia and the kicking of the local Germans back to the Reich, but as usual the book is about atmosphere and the author is just a master at that recreating Berlin late 1945 and its myriad inhabitants, transients and occupants superbly; there are a few loose threads from older novels that are finally tied here (the fate of Miriam Rosenthal and of Rosa's father occupy John and Effy for most of the book), dangerous gangsters, ambiguous allied officers and of course the "jobs" John has to do for his American and Soviet masters...

While the usual danger moments and suspense occur here and there, the novel is mostly historical fiction that lives and breathes through its characters, mainly John and Effi who split the pages between them.

As mentioned the novel ends at a good stopping point and I am really looking forward to the next installment as new storylines are introduced, new loose ends develop and new secondary characters of interest appear in addition to many secondary characters from the previous 4 novels.

Excellent stuff and highly recommended.

And to end, another great quote that now looks to the future and has John  and Albert Wiesner (whom John helped escape Nazi Germany through his Soviet connections after his eminent Jewish physician father has been murdered by the Nazis in 1939 and Albert assaulted some Gestapo officials and became a fugitive, while later John helped his mother and sister emigrate to London using this time his UK intelligence connections -  note that here it is still late 1945, so the state of Israel is still in the future) discussing the future of the surviving European Jews:

"‘Says who? I didn’t think you were religious.’
Albert grinned. ‘I’m not.’
‘I don’t think you can use the Bible as a title deed,’ Russell insisted.
‘Some people do. Like the Europeans who conquered the Americas – being in touch with the right God made everything okay.’
‘You don’t believe that.’
‘I think that’s what will happen.’
Russell thought about that. ‘Maybe it will,’ he conceded. ‘A friend of mine suggested emptying Cyprus – the Greeks to Greece, the Turks to Turkey – and then giving it to the Jews. Lovely beaches, good soil, not that far from Jerusalem.’
Albert propped his head up on one arm and gave Russell a look. ‘We already have our homeland.’
‘Yes, I expect you do.’
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ Albert said. ‘I understand why the Poles are expelling the Germans from their new territories. And I understand why they’re making it impossible for the Jews to return. If my friends and I have our way, the Arabs will all be expelled from Palestine. Anything else is just storing up trouble for the future.’
‘That will put a bit of a strain on the world’s sympathy, don’t you think?’
`Once we have the land, we can do without the sympathy.’"

GIVEAWAY: Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

Visit the Graceling Realm here 
Visit Kristin Cashore's website here
Read a section of Bitterblue here

Thanks to Big Honcho Media and Penguin Publishers Fantasy Book Critic has two copies of Bitterblue by Krisin Cashore to giveaway.


About Bitterblue:

Bitterblue is the long-awaited companion to New York Times bestsellers Graceling and Fire.


Eight years after Graceling, Bitterblue is now queen of Monsea. But the influence of her father, a violent psychopath with mind-altering abilities, lives on. Her advisors, who have run things since Leck died, believe in a forward-thinking plan: Pardon all who committed terrible acts under Leck's reign, and forget anything bad ever happened. But when Bitterblue begins sneaking outside the castle--disguised and alone--to walk the streets of her own city, she starts realizing that the kingdom has been under the thirty-five-year spell of a madman, and the only way to move forward is to revisit the past.


Two thieves, who only steal what has already been stolen, change her life forever. They hold a key to the truth of Leck's reign. And one of them, with an extreme skill called a Grace that he hasn't yet identified, holds a key to her heart.

GIVEAWAY RULES:

1. This contest is open to the US only.

2. This contest starts at 11:59 am EST May 12, 2012 and will close at 11:59 pm EST May 19, 2012.

3. You must be 13 years of age or older to enter.

4. To enter send an email with the subject "BITTERBLUE" to FBCgiveaway@gmail.com. Be sure to include your name and mailing address.

5. Only one entry per person. Multiple entries will result in all entries being deleted.

6. All personal information will be used for the sole purpose of this contest and will be deleted at the end. Information will not be sold.

7. HAVE FUN!



"Last Will" by Bryn Greenwood (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

Official Bryn Greenwood Website

Order "Last Will" HERE

INTRODUCTION: Last Will is a book that came out of nowhere for me. I saw it recently on Net Galley and being in the mood for a change of pace I checked a sample and enjoyed it enough to request a review e-arc, but I never expected the wonderful engaging experience Last Will provided or the fact that I simply could not put it down once I idly opened it to see where it will fit in my reading plans.

"Bernie Raleigh is a failure at nearly everything he touches. Nobody notices a loser, and after being kidnapped for ransom as a child, Bernie has spent his adult life trying to avoid being noticed. That's impossible now that he's inherited his grandfather's enormous fortune. The inheritance comes complete with a mansion, a lot of obligations, and a very problematic housekeeper named Meda Amos. Beauty queen, alien abductee, crypto-Jew, single mother--Meda is all those things, and she may be the only person who can help Bernie survive his new and very public life."

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Last Will's blurb is reasonably accurate as it goes but it does not convey the power and richness of the book:

  

Bernie, now 30 and moonlighting as an assistant librarian in Kansas city, last male scion of a very rich family, returns to the childhood mansion when his grandfather dies and leaves him his billions, but said childhood mansion is also the place where Bernie was abducted for ransom as a 9 year old - at the local school more precisely - and where the events that shaped him in the retiring and frightened man of today took place, in addition to the tragic accidental deaths of his "golden boy" older brother and of his father, deaths which his estranged mother somehow blames on him - or maybe not blames directly but in the "why my idiot son survived when my husband and my very promising first born did not?" indirect way...

  We slowly discover his peculiarities but Bernie's voice is very compelling and he is fundamentally a good man:

 "I believed Meda’s mother. I don’t mean that I accept the notion that aliens came to our planet and took Muriel into their space ship. Although I don’t dismiss that idea as impossible, it seems like the least likely of several possibilities. I believe something happened to her, something that made her feel taken away from herself, something that returned her not quite as she had been.

I was nine, nearly ten. They were waiting for me as I walked home from school. I was taking a shortcut through the city park, and someone called my name. Amy waved at me. She was a blonde girl who had worked for my parents as a maid for a while. I had a little crush on her. I remember that she asked me about Robby. When I told her he was sick at home, she looked upset. I followed her gaze to a battered van parked up the hill, where the path widened into a little lane that eventually emptied onto a side street. There was a man leaning against the van watching us. Amy’s boyfriend, Joel."

At the mansion he meets Meda who is an early 20s local exotic looking beauty with facial scars that somehow make her even more compelling - the ugly history of those is recounted later in the novel - from a weird downscale family living in and out trailers, single mother of a toddler, working as assistant housekeeper for her aunt, now the domestic help in charge of Bernie's mansion. Tough minded and knowing that "sleeping with the boss" is unlikely to lead anywhere but to social opprobrium and heartbreak, Meda walks a fine line between humoring the immediately lovestruck Bernie and keeping him at a distance, but as her good looks tend to attract the local tough boys, she is slowly attracted by Bernie's goodness and loneliness; of course a lot lies between them, from his peculiarities, to both their histories to the social gulf...

  "He was a nice guy, but I didn’t know what it was about, his being so eager to help me out, and then paying for lunch and a movie. I figured it was about sex, because it’s almost always about sex. During the movie, I thought about how I felt about that. Even though he definitely wasn’t my type, he wasn’t bad. He was too tall and he wasn’t handsome, but he had a nice face, with those sad dog eyes and his crooked nose. I liked that he was so polite, and it didn’t hurt that he had money. Except he was a disaster waiting to happen, being who he was, being my boss, being so sad."

Last Will is one of the most charming and uplifting book I've read in recent years - last year's The Lover's Dictionary and 2010's Thera are other similar books I greatly enjoyed - while staying very grounded in "reality", though of course both Bernie and Meda who alternate first person narration - with few interludes from Bernie's aunt who functions as an outside/back story POV - are quite unlikely themselves, but the skill of the author is such that both just stood out, took over and made me not able to put this book down once I opened it. The alternating narrative structure dealing with the same events from Bernie or Meda's perspective works very well and I think it is a key to the book's success.

  

The secondary cast of characters - especially Meda's family - are also very well drawn and the small town feel is authentic and not glossed over in any way. A special mention goes to Meda's mom, Muriel whose "alien abduction" stories are both pathetic but also a way to cope with her not-so-easy life as Bernie understands the best. Despite their very different situations, Bernie's abduction as a child and what happened then, all recounted at key parts of the book and essentially defining him, coupled with his parents and most of his family's low regard for him, made him closest psychologically with Mureil, while Meda generally tough minded resembles her more practical grandma and aunt who kept the family going.

The storyline is not particularly complicated, though there are a few surprises here and there, but that is beside the point as Last Will lives in Bernie and Meda. The back stories are quite important and the way they are inserted leading to the final piece of the puzzle that explains some of Bernie's stranger peculiarities like his inability to sleep with someone else - sleep as in sleep not sex btw, where Bernie is reasonably normal, though of course with some strangeness there too - fit very well the general structure of the book.

Overall Last Will is a top 25 novel of mine that I expect to reread across the years when needing a funny, smart and ultimately very uplifting novel.  

The Written by Ben Galley (Reviewed by Mihir Wanchoo)

Official Author Website

Order the Book HERE

Read an Excerpt HERE

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Ben Galley was born in 1987 in the British Isles. As a child, exposure to the works of Tolkien and Greek mythology helped fire his imagination and left him with a great desire to spin his own stories. Ben wrote the first book as a DIY project and since then has written several self-help blog posts and also offers consultancy services for the same. He’s currently hard at work with the next book. 

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: His name is Farden. They whisper that he’s dangerous. Dangerous is only the half of it. Something has gone missing from the libraries of Arfell. Something very old, and something very powerful. Five scholars are now dead, a country is once again on the brink of war, and the magick council is running out of time and options. 

Entangled in a web of lies and politics and dragged halfway across icy Emaneska and back, Farden must unearth a secret even he doesn’t want to know, a secret that will shake the foundations of his world. Dragons, drugs, magick, death, and the deepest of betrayals await. Breathtakingly vast, chillingly dark, brooding and dangerous, The Written will leave you impatiently waiting for the next adventure… Welcome to Emaneska! 

FORMAT/INFO: The Written is 420 pages long divided over nineteen chapters and an epilogue that is spread over four parts. Narration is in the third-person, majorly via the protagonist Farden and a few one-off character POVs. This is the first book in the Emaneska series. 

December 1, 2010 marked the e-book publication of The Written and it was self published by the author. Cover design is provided by Mikael Westman.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The Written is a debut book that I had no clue about but thanks to Mark Lawrence, I was clued to its existence. Usually it’s said never judge a book by its cover but in this case, I was ready to make an exception. The understated cover really drew my eye with its stark color usage, so in this case I was ready to make an exception. The book blurb didn’t really do justice or give any idea about the plot content. But I was truly curious about what this book would be about. 

The book is set in the world of Emaneska, a land of old magic and dragons and in this world are the mages called the Written. The curious thing about them is the presence of certain written words on their back that is supposed to be unique to each individual. One such individual is the protagonist Farden who is said to be one of the strongest crafters of their type of magic as well as one of the scariest people around. He’s also a bit aloof and shares his weird skills with a vampyre who loves history and older legends. His idle life is restructured due to events happening in the city of Arfell wherein a precious book containing several dark legends is stolen and no knows exactly who did it. Fingers are pointed at the dragons with which a current shaky stalemate has been achieved but all is at stake as the book needs to be reclaimed to save the world from ultimate chaos.

The author has a very distinct style of writing about his world, it is a world cloaked in mystery and one whose legends are not exactly the whole truth but there’s no one to confirm or deny it. The world’s layers are slowly peeled and the reader is as confused as the main protagonist as he’s faced with mysteries at every step. The pace of the story is another plus point as things are constantly happening that will propel reader onward, the pace never lets up and this also mirrors the rising tensions in the plot. Going on to the main protagonist, Farden as a character is supposed to be this big, bad and scary mage who has every one spooked. However the reader never gets the feeling entirely based on his actions as through out the story he often stumbles and falters in his path. Perhaps the author’s efforts to present him as a dark, badass warrior mage haven’t quite come out as envisioned by the author. I as a reader felt that he lacked that special factor that is so thoroughly advertized in the blurb and through out character conversations.

One good thing about the book is that there are certain twists that will surprise the reader by genuinely coming out of the left field, the story however doesn’t quite live up as it often takes a predictable route. A good example of this would be how the story unfolds towards the discovery of the villain however what happens in the end is what really makes the reader excited for the next book. The characterization is definitely a plus but the author has work cut out for him in the forthcoming books as there are some characters that are interesting however don’t get much page time and therefore they only enchant the reader for a little time.

I was thoroughly intrigued by the revelations about the world’s magic system and back history however it wasn’t thoroughly explored in this book and this could be done purposefully by the author since this is his debut and the start of the series. Lastly the book also has some good action sequences that show the twisted imagination of the author and the final sequence involving dragons is probably the highlight of the climax besides the end twist. Overall this book does have its shortcomings but it also has some silver points to it that make it stand out and fill me with hope for the sequels, I’ll be looking forward to the Pale Kings, as it promises to one up its predecessor and also provide a through background about the world’ s history. As a reader I can’t ask for more…

CONCLUSION: Ben Galley’s The Written shows a spark that is admirable, the talent might not match the execution entirely but it's there and it will be heartening to see how this young author manages to learn and hone his craft with the upcoming books, I’ll definitely  be taking an interest in them to follow through and see how he develops his skills.